“When stones falls”: a conceptual-functional account of subject-verb agreement in Persian

Most linguistic studies of subject-verb agreement have thus far attempted to account for this phenomenon in terms of either syntax or semantics. Kim (2004) [Kim, J., 2004. Hybrid agreement in English. Linguistics 42 (6), 1105-1128] proposes a 'hybrid analysis', which allows for a morphosyntactic agreement and a semantic agreement within the same sentence. In this paper we propose that conceptual-functional views of language may provide a powerful and complementary approach to the 'hybrid analysis' approach. Drawing on data from subject-verb agreement in Persian, we show how the choice between plural and singular verb endings may reflect a speaker's construal of an event. In particular it appears that the construal resolution/level of schematicity has a bearing on subject-verb agreement patterns. It is argued that linguistic devices that are often described as 'optional' in descriptive grammars may in fact be motivated and sensitive to conceptualisation of experience.